Defence raise new concerns with Hunter-class frigates, being built in SA

Defence officials have raised new concerns about the Adelaide-built future frigates, including firepower and issues with the Navy’s workforce.

Australia’s future warship fleet is at risk of being outgunned by enemies while the cost of the project could blow out even further, Defence officials have warned in a new report.

The Hunter-class frigates, under construction at Adelaide’s Osborne shipyard, are also at risk of not being crewed properly by Navy due to potential workforce shortages.

The concerns have been outlined in the Auditor-General’s latest report into Australia’s major defence projects, which revealed several new risks that “emerged” in the Hunter-class program during the 2021-22 financial year.

It comes as the sweeping Defence Strategic Review, which will guide Australia’s military spending and strategies, is handed to the federal government.

Defence Minister Richard Marles declared the review the “single most important re-evaluation of Australia’s strategic posture in the past 35 years” before he and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were handed the classified document on Tuesday afternoon.

In the Auditor-General’s report, Defence officials raised concerns about the Hunter-class frigate’s capability in battle.

“The delivered (Hunter-class frigate) and future batches has insufficient capability to counter current and emerging threats,” the report said.

According to Navy, the Hunter-class frigate will be “one of the most advanced anti-submarine warships in the world”.

An artist's impression of the Hunter-class frigate to be built by BAE Systems.

It will act as Australia’s premier warship at a time China is rapidly expanding the size and sophistication of its submarine fleet.

The report comes as BAE makes an unsolicited pitch to the federal government to replace three Hunter-class ships with air warfare destroyers.

Defence pledged to establish a “spiral development strategy” to improve the frigate’s capability against enemy forces, but no further details on the initiative were available.

The Auditor-General’s report also brought into question Navy’s ability to “raise, train and sustain” the workforce required to crew the ships and other platforms sufficiently.

Defence promised to “identify training opportunities such as high fidelity simulators and conduct workforce modelling (and) analysis to identify key skillets required”.

Navy is already under pressure to grow its submarine workforce from about 850 to 2500 sailors in order to crew the highly complex nuclear-powered submarines to be built in Adelaide under the AUKUS security pact.

The Hunter-class project’s budget has already increased from $30bn to $45bn, but the Auditor-General’s report raised the prospect of even further cost blow outs.

“The acquisition and sustainment of Hunter-class frigate is not achievable with the allocated funding,” was another of the new risks to emerge in 2021-22, according to the report.

The new risks add to a suite of other previously identified issues, including the higher-than-expected weight of the designed frigate.

In 2021, BAE announced the first of the nine anti-submarine frigates would not begin construction until June 2024 – 18 months later than expected.

But BAE boss Craig Lockhart revealed last August the huge delay had largely been clawed back, and construction on the first ship would begin this May.

The cause of the delay was due to design issues plaguing the design of the UK’s Type 26 frigate – the parent ship of the Hunter-class.

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